Those of you who have read the site for a while will be familiar with my interest in finding the perfect Finder-based web search tool. I'm not talking about Sherlock or Watson, where you're looking for something specific. Instead, I'm always looking for the next great tool that makes it easy to run a search in Google without first switching to the browser, loading google.com, and typing the search terms. I want something small and unobtrusive and yet (almost conversely) easy to find and use in a hurry. Until today, I'd been using ShadowGoogle (Aug 5 2002 Pick of the Week.

As of today, however, Searchling has become my Google search tool of choice. It's a menubar add-on (installation = one double click) that, when clicked, opens a one-line search window with options for which site to search (Google, Dictionary, ebay) as well as what type of info to search for (web, images, news). When not in use, all I lose in screen real-estate is one small character on my menubar, and yet it's easily reached from every application.

The only reason it's a 9 and not a 10 is that the toolbar icon is not movable, as are the Apple-provided toolbar widgets (this may well be a limitation imposed by Apple, however, so maybe it's really a 10).

Sorry, ShadowGoogle (still a great tool), but recovering desktop space is a big plus for Searchling. Unobtrusive, easy to use, easy to install, free, and it works perfectly ... Searchling has earned a permanent spot in my menubar!

Key Xing recently added Google search capability. You can assign it to any key combination. Hit the key combination and a small window pops up. Type in what you are looking for and your browser opens up with the answer from Google.

http://www.lumacode.com/keyxing/index.html

I originally bought Key Xing so that I could use the function keys in X the way Apple lets you use them in 9. Cost is $7.00.

If you want to add the Mac OS X Hints site to the list of searchable sites in Searchling, open the sites.xml file (Contents:Resources:sites.xml) with your favorite text editor and add the following block of text:

Your idea of editing the XML file was great. I always liked Googls for searching the web, but for weather and stocks, I always prefered Yahoo! so I just added the information for searching Yahoo! in the XML file and it worked.
Here is what I added:
name
Yahoo!
types
type
Web
url
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=
type
Weather
url
http://search.weather.yahoo.com/search/weather2?p=
type
Stocks
url
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=

For more inspiration on editing Searchling's sites.xml file, check out the Bookmarklets Search tools webpage. You'll have to do a little editing of the javascript functions to extract the html queries and you'll have to escape &'s (i.e. &amp;). Bookmarklets were likely the precursor to tools like Searchling.

When I cut and paste the recommended code before the closing </plist> tag, nothing changes at all. When I quit and re-launch Searchling, the changes I made to Searchling.plist disappear and revert to the original state.

Locate the actual Searchling app. Right-click and you should see a contextual menu appear - in that menu one of the selections is "Show package contents" - select that. You should now see a dir/folder called "Contents", double-click that and you will see several dirs and files. Locate the "Resources" dir and open that and you will find your "sites.xml" file to edit.

a search for the file, sites.xml revealed a file in the searchling folder inside the ApplicationSupport folder. how will editing this file help me if it's not in the app itself? do i edit default.plist instead? why is mine different?

i used to use shadowGoogle a lot. then i realized that quickeys has the ability to open a preset URL with a keystroke. so now i just press control-G in any app and Chimera comes forward with a new tab containing the Google search page, with the Google search field already focused. on my DSL connection, that page loads in the same amount of time it would take me to move the mouse and click on shadowGoogle. (it's difficult to time it, but i'd say it's about half a second; feels pretty much instantaneous.)

of course this doesn't give me access to multiple search sites like dictionary.com or what have you, which Searchling and other tools provide, but if you need that functionality you could assign other keys to those URLs, or you could even create a quickeys toolbar with buttons for each site you need.

When apple made Jaguar, they created a block somewhere and somehow, preventing and making it impossible to use any previous 3rd party menu extras. Since 10.2, all menulings are really applications in disguise, which is why you can't move them around. However, there is a way to eliminate this block using Unsanity's Menu Extra Enabler (I wonder where they came up with that name) at http://www.unsanity.com/download.php?product=mee

In the more recent nightly builds of Chimera, keywords have been enabled for bookmarks. This means you can specify to type 'moh' in the url bar and it'll pull up macosxhints.com, or whatever you specify.

I've set up my bookmark keywords to have google capabilities, so that I can type '? your mom' and it will come up with a google search for your mom. This is how you can do this:

1. Make sure you have a pretty recent nightly build.2. Create a bookmark, title it whatever you want3. Change the location to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%s4. Change the keyword to whatever you want (I use '?')

You can now search in the url bar by typing your keyword and search item (you can use multiple word search items as well).

I hope this helps some people who didn't know this was now possible in Chimera.

On another note, I've recently been using Youpi Key for iTunes controlling and app switching.

For anyone who, for whatever reason, would rather not run an extra app to search Google, here's another great way of accessing Google. Granted, it only searches web sites, but if you create a toolbar favorite linked to the javascript line I've pasted below, rather than loading the Google web page, you immediately get a little popup window where you can type your keywords, after which, you get the Google results.

Someone who knows more about this type of stuff could probably modify the link so you could have a second button to search images, or another to search videos, etc.

Yes, Rob, the inability to move the menubar widget is an Apple-imposed limitation, as they have disabled all non-Apple menu items that use the API which allows you to move stuff. It's undocumented, and no one, save for Unsanity, wants to use it in that case. So, they use the documented API, which places stuff in the menubar, but you're not allowed to move it around.

I liked Huevos in this role, but I just might have to agree. Searchbar has nice preferences, a substantial search engine list, and the option to make it a floating window means that it is just as accessible as Searchling, without the problems of a potentially non-compliant menubar.

New search to open in a Tab
Authored by: calebmaki on Dec 03, '02 12:59:43AM

I use Chimera and I love being able to use Tabs instead of new windows. I like Searchling, but I don't like how it has to open a new window in Navigator when I already have a window open. Is it possible to have may search results open in a new Tab instead?

This is fantastic! I try to keep only neccesities in my toolbar - but I think this ones staying. I noticed the left pulldown menu was a bit small to display some of the longer site names. This is easy enough to resolve if you have the developer tools installed. Specifically interface builder.

1. Right click on Searchling - select "Show Package Contents"
2. Navigate to /Contents/Resources/English.lproj
3. Double click on "MainMenu.nib" and Interface Builder application should open.
4. Two windows will open - in one of the windows you should see an icon with the label "QueryBox". Double click that icon.
5. There's your interface - click the left-dropdown menu and handles will appear to resize as you desire.

You can also change the dimensions of the search field itself and the right-hand dropdown menu if you desire.

BTW - I have boycotted VT since they started making you jump through hoops to get software updates. I now use MacUpdate - direct download links - like VT used to be. Here's the xml for MacUpdate:

Anyone know how to setup a search for the MacOSXHints Forums? I am pretty familiar with setting these things up - but I have never been able to figure teh Forums out - sure it must be something simple too.

Also - since this is using Google to search OSXFAQ you will notice that the query string at the end has "+site=site%3Aosxfaq.com" appended to it. How can you create the proper string for Searchling with the query string as the last element in that format (as opposed to the site...)?

Note the use of the comments in XML - helps a lot with my sites.xml list getting so long.

What about creating dividers in the Searchling menus? I tried several failed attempts at creating empty <dict> entities for example with the name of "----------" or similar - but Searchling didn't like it - went all wonky and display several G icons across the menu bar. With long lists - some pseudo-menu item seperators would be nice.

Why would I want to run yet another application when I don't have to. My web browser is always open and I put a google search form on my (local) home page. It's easy to do, Google has the very simple HTML ready to copy and paste for easy addition to any web page.

The way I look at it the fewer "goodies" like this I run the better. I guess it comes from supporting computers in a corporate environment (for a living). The more stuff you have on your computer the more that can go wrong. Which is closely related to the first principle of goood engineering, the K.I.S.S. principle.

Method B: Try to find an open window of the browser on the screen amidst the clutter, click on it, repeat most of (A).

Method C: Click on "G" in menubar, type search phrase, hit enter.

There are, of course, many other ways to do this; I've listed only a few. But I think you get the idea -- it's about ease of operation. To me, (C) is far easier and is worth the (minimal, given OS X's nature) risk of any added difficulties.

Frankly, I don't get it either..... I don't see the difference between clicking on the "G", initiating a search that will oblige the user to open another window for the info harvested anyway, and simply doing a "I'm feelin' lucky" via another tab or open window in the browser....., unless of course, the user is stuck with Internet Exasperator as browser and it crashes with more than one and one-half windows open. I agree that it is best to avoid superfluous running apps as much as possible. The fact is that Mozilla 1.2.1 makes these superfluous little apps look like cacapeepeepoopoo.

Doesn't work at all for me???
Authored by: ChaChi on Dec 03, '02 07:44:00PM

1.) I double click to start "Searchling".
2.) I click once on the "G" in the menu bar.
3.) I type in some text and hit return.
4.) Nothing happens?!?!?!

I'm running 10.1.5 on an iMac 333. Is anyone else having this same problem? The other menu items that I have enabled are: "Classic Spy", "Modem", "Script Menu", "Sound", "Displays", "Clock" and "ASM". Maybe one of them isn't playing friendly with "Searchling"?

well i won't rule out one of those dumb typos that are so blatantly obvious, you miss them every time (you know the ones i'm talking about)...but i am pretty sure i have checked it very carefully. the only thing i can think of is...the place where you put the URL for the site...do any characters have to be escaped, or written as a meta code (i.e. &gt; instead of > )?

Nothing wrong with this app, but it's a one-trick-pony, and the trick ain't even that great. Just drag the link for Google's search window page to the toolbar bookmarks in Chimera or Internet Explorer, name the thing "Google," and click on that whenever you want to run a search. Far more versatile than any of these googlesearchers is Web Jumper, which lets you try the same (or a modified) search across a broad range of search engines (including Google).

I wrote support for separators into the code, with other numerous improvements. I sent the code back to the author and he will be rolling it into a new release as soon as he's done with his college exams.

If you need the new code before then, grab it here. If you want to know all the additional stuff I did, you'll have to poke through the code and read my comments. For those who don't want/need the code, and/or don't have the Developer Tools installed, you can find the compiled app in the build folder on the disk this will mount.

Unfortunately, I've not finished working on a friendly interface for the XML sites list, though that data has been rolled into the user defaults scheme (so that users can have different configurations). In the mean time, you can edit using the defaults command line option (if you are very adventurous), or just edit the defaults.plist file (just like you edit the sites.xml file in the first release). If you want to put a separator in, add the following lines to the array under the sitesArray key: